The Trinidad Guardian Newspaper - Barbara Jenkinshttp://www2.guardian.co.tt/byline-authors/barbara-jenkins
enA kind of immortalityhttp://www2.guardian.co.tt/lifestyle/2016-04-03/kind-immortality
<div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www2.guardian.co.tt/sites/default/files/field/image/pat%20bishop.png" width="400" height="599" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time. <strong>—Banksy</strong></p>
<p>Pat Bishop’s first death came suddenly on Saturday, August 20, 2011. With her boots on, at a high-level meeting discussing the state and future direction of the arts in T&amp;T, and in the company of so many of her colleagues in the arts community, she collapsed.</p>
<p>That a state of emergency was declared the following day at the then prime minister’s bidding is ironically fitting, for in Pat Bishop’s passing, T&amp;T lost its quintessential Renaissance citizen—one who embodied and practiced a love of, an expertise in, a passion for all areas of the arts, culture, scholarship, education, people and the environment—and a loss of that magnitude would have rightly plunged the nation into a state of cultural crisis had it not been scuppered by a political crisis.</p>
<p>But, since we correctly boast that we are a nine days’ wonder society, who says Pat Bishop’s name today, almost five years since her passing? At Panorama, you hear somebody declare how they miss Pat Bishop’s erudite commentary; at beach clean-ups, there is a whispered wish that they would bring back Charlie, Bishop’s creation when she was at SWMCOL; in private homes and public spaces, a person passes one of her art works, catches their breath, says something like, all that talent gone, then exhales and moves on. </p>
<p>Certainly, at the newly restored and packed-out Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception one Saturday evening in March this year, the appreciative audience at the Lydians concert paid homage to Pat Bishop’s legacy. And there’s the PALM Foundation whose vision and responsibility it is to continue Bishop’s mission in art, literature and music. But one day, and I hope it’s a long, long, way in the future, no one here will call her name. </p>
<p>It’s not that we do not honour our people in a lasting way. In my own little corner of T&amp;T, the children of the Siegert family are there in the names of Woodbrook streets, Arthur Lok Jack is a school of the University of the West Indies. There’s a Cipriani Roundabout, Boulevard and Institute. Wendy Fitzwilliam Boulevard replaced Diamond Boulevard, Brian Lara Promenade on Independence Square is the Marine Square of my childhood. Landowners, business magnates, statesmen, beauty queens, sportsmen have memorials there and elsewhere.</p>
<p>Where are the icons celebrating cultural figures? I struggle to think of one in my little corner, apart from The Lord Kitchener Auditorium in Napa, matched in Sapa by the Sundar Popo Auditorium. Where the statue of The Mighty Sparrow stands is called the St Ann’s Roundabout. Naming something lifts it from the generic to the specific. Naming something after somebody confers a kind of immortality on that person.</p>
<p>How fortunate we the people of T&amp;T are then, that when the last person alive today who knew Patricia Alison Bishop, when that last person dies and her name ceases to be said, Pat Bishop will not yet meet her second death. Her name will be called for centuries to come in Rochester, New York State, thanks to a serendipitous and enduring friendship forged a long time ago between two Bishop Anstey High School girls.</p>
<p>Dr Wilbur Downs, an American virologist, first came to Trinidad just before America entered World War II. The epidemiological survey of malaria he conducted here at that time remains a classic in the field. A decade later, he returned with his family to continue his work. He was founding director of the Trinidad Regional Virus Laboratory (later the Caribbean Epidemiology Center (Carec), now The Caribbean Public Health Agency (Carpha). His daughter, Helen Haller (née Downs), whom I interviewed by email, tells the story of her first encounter with Pat Bishop. </p>
<p>“We met in January of 1954 at Bishop’s, on my first day there, as a totally baffled American! You cannot imagine the culture shock of suddenly finding myself in a classroom with girls who were Hindu, Muslim, Chinese, Black, and all combinations thereof, with accents I could hardly understand, and in a setting that I was quite unfamiliar with.</p>
<p>I had lived in Trinidad for one year already and had gone to St Andrew’s School in Maraval for that year (…) but Pat’s way of doing things was very new to me (…) there I was, suddenly the new girl in a roomful of people almost all of whom had already spent a year together. Being who she was, she took me under her wing, befriended me, explained to me all the things I needed to know (the lockers, the different notebooks, when I could use a pencil and when I must use a pen, where the classrooms were, etc, etc, etc) Somehow my admiration of her art ability drew us together.</p>
<p>I was hopelessly inept, while she could with a few strokes sketch a cartoon, or paint a gorgeous watercolour. I still have some of those early works of hers. I guess at bottom it was what they call ‘chemistry’—some people get along easily together, have rapport is another way to put it.” </p>
<p>The friendship grew and deepened with a mutual love of intellectual pursuits. They did school work together, visited each other’s homes, and simply grew up together as young women until each went her way to university, Pat to the UK, Helen back to the USA, keeping in touch by letter. Bishop eventually came back home after stints in California, USA, and at the UWI Mona Campus. It was 25 years before they saw each other again.</p>
<p>“In the early eighties, my husband and I went to Trinidad on a birding trip (you know, the Asa Wright Nature Center, Caroni Swamp, and that sort of thing). We stayed a few extra days and visited with Pat, which was lovely, and established that we still were indeed friends of a wonderful sort.”<br />
When Pat was in Florida for heart surgery, Helen visited her. </p>
<p>“…from then until she died, I went down to Trinidad every two or three years to see her for a week or more. I managed to time most of those visits so that I could hear a couple of the operas she put on, or attend the opening of a show of her art, and be present when she received her honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies. I stayed at her house, and we spent hours and hours (…) talking and talking. In between, we would talk on the phone once each month or two (…) Now (and even then I sort of foresaw it) I wish I had tapes of those wonderful conversations, in her bedroom, on the street, in the car, as well as on the phone.”</p>
<p>Among their many pursuits, Helen and Chris Haller engage in change bell ringing. That is, they ring huge bells that are housed in towers, usually in churches, by pulling on long ropes that link each ringer in the ringing chamber at a lower level, to a bell mounted on a wheel structure in the tower. When the ringer pulls on the rope, it causes the wheel to turn and the bell to swing; its clapper hits the rim and makes a note. Change-ringing bells are rung one at a time in a series of permutations to create changes, that is, rounds of harmonious sounds.</p>
<p>Each such group of bells, most usually six or eight or ten or 12, is called a “ring” of bells. While there are thousands of towers with active rings of bells in England, they are comparatively rare in North America, numbering just over 50. The nearest one to Rochester is the 12-bell ring at St James’ Cathedral in Toronto. New York State can boast of two other towers—eight bells on the property of the Community of the Holy Spirit in Brewster, and 12 bells (the only 12 in the US) at Trinity Church, Wall Street. </p>
<p>When they moved to Rochester, NY, in 1994, Helen and Chris, looked for a suitable tower in which to install bells. The Church of the Ascension was a promising possibility. With permission granted, specialised structural engineering and architectural expertise was secured to ensure the tower structure could support ten swinging bells, and their housing, altogether weighing almost three tons.</p>
<p>It was many years before a sufficiency of funds was raised to approach the Whitechapel Foundry, London, UK, to cast the bells. Part of the casting process involved the incorporation of a name and an inscription for each bell. The bells were cast, assembled, tuned, disassembled, shipped and finally they arrived at their new home. Helen tells of their welcome.</p>
<p>“The truck with our container arrived on the church premises on August 6, 2015, and was unloaded on August 13. The bells, wheels, and other fittings were stored in the container while the frame members were hoisted up into the bell chamber and assembled. The five little bells were hoisted into the bell chamber and placed in their locations on August 21, and the five big bells went up on August 26. (…) On September 12, we were joined by six capable and helpful ringers from Toronto, and all ten bells sounded in Rounds for the first time. In many ways it was the thrill of a lifetime, the culmination of much hope, much planning, and much work on many people’s parts.”</p>
<p>Each bell is inscribed with one or two lines of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Stanza 106 of his In Memoriam. In an article for The Ringing World, Helen tells about the naming of the ten bells. Honoured are two family members, Chris’ father and step-mother, Chtistian and Trudy, and other people who were significant in their lives. Among them are Geddes, a deceased fellow bell ringer, and Pete (Seeger) and Woody (Guthrie), musicians. </p>
<p>Important figures in the history of the city of Rochester also feature in the naming. Susan is for Susan B Anthony, a tireless worker for suffrage and human rights, and Frederick is for Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who became a social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer and statesman.</p>
<p>There is Martin, for Martin Luther King, a visionary orator, a champion of civil rights and the rights of the poor. Julian, named for Saint Julian of Norwich is Helen’s and Pat’s favourite saint. She lived as an anchoress in 14th century England, and is the earliest woman whose writings in the English language have come down to us. </p>
<p>How many times have we Lydians heard Pat recite to us, in our moments of self-doubt, one of her favourite quotations from St Julian: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. </p>
<p>In the article, Helen says this about Bell No 4: <br />
“Bell No 4 is ‘Patricia’: Pat Bishop was Helen’s dearest friend from age 12 on, in high school in Trinidad, West Indies, until her death four years ago. But she was so much more than just her personal friend. She was Trinidad’s ‘cultural icon’: artist, musician, environmentalist and conscience.” <br />
Bell No 4 reads:<br />
Patricia. Ring in the love of truth and right. When the PATRICIA bell is rung, the note F# sounds. Helen says she chose bell No 4 for her friend, Pat, because it is the bell she is likely to ring most often. “I like to think F# stands not just for a music note but for friendship, sharp and true.”</p>
<p>The oldest active change-ringing bells in the world, a ring of five bells, is housed in St Lawrence Church, Ipswich. Called Wolsey’s Bells, after Cardinal Wolsey who grew up in the area, they date from the mid-fifteenth century, almost half a century before Columbus set sail for the New World.</p>
<p>Cast in the same Whitechapel Bell Foundry, they are unchanged and unmodified, still with their original clappers. If that is any guide, Patricia Alison Bishop and all the people honoured by Helen and Chris Haller, in their naming on the bells of the Ascension Episcopal Church, Rochester, NY, can look forward to more than half a millennium of having their names sounded when the bells ring out. Achieving an immortality of sorts. </p>
</div></div></div>Sun, 03 Apr 2016 05:12:11 +0000jbirch101115361 at http://www2.guardian.co.ttBarbara JenkinsChild bride, police sergeant and blind catfish at The Normandiehttp://www2.guardian.co.tt/arts/2015-02-08/child-bride-police-sergeant-and-blind-catfish-normandie
<div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www2.guardian.co.tt/sites/default/files/field/image/Tea%20and%20Readings.jpg" width="400" height="266" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>At Tea and Readings, an event hosted once every other month by Joan Dayal and the team of Paper Based bookshop at The Normandie hotel, you’re as likely to hear an established prize-winning writer as an emerging one, a poet as a calypsonian, a spoken work artist as a serious academic. </p>
<p>The first of this year’s Tea and Readings, held on the last Saturday in January, was no exception. Guardian books writer Shivanee Ramlochan presented a trio of stellar writers: Barbara Lalla, Sharon Millar and Philip Nanton.</p>
<p>Millar, winner of the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the 2012 Small Axe Short Fiction Award, read two extracts from her short story Spelunking. In a valley in the Northern Range where limestone deposits colour the waterfall rocks green and dissolved iron seeps through the water like blood, Ella, a young woman working on her PhD thesis, sets up a year-long camp to observe the blind catfish that inhabit the pools of the Cumaca caves. </p>
<p>That she is pregnant, the child conceived and born during her forest sojourn, adds another dimension to this story, in which the perilous sport of cave exploration is used as a metaphor for Ella’s own seemingly reckless venture into unknown territory where catfish lose their sight and people their ability to see things as they really are.</p>
<p>This beautifully-told, richly-described, layered story incorporates history, folklore, ancient superstitions, scientific investigation, feminine mystique, transformative landscapes, a plane crash of long ago, and mysterious present-day goings-on. Spelunking appears in Millar’s debut short story collection The Whale House (Peepal Tree Press, 2015).</p>
<p>Uncle Brother, Barbara Lalla’s third novel, also set in Trinidad, is a time and a world away from Millar’s. In her two selections, Lalla hooked listeners with the tempting bait of the child bride, Samdai, following her trembling departure from her home in the wide, bright, open cane fields of early 20th-century Couva, to her unpromising new life with her young husband, Jai, and his family, in the more shadowy world of the cocoa estate. The second extract tells of the enormous sacrifice that the eponymous Uncle Brother, son of the young couple, now a man, makes to secure the future success of his younger siblings, fearing that, “If I even shifted my eye away from you, you would all simply disappear.” </p>
<p>Peppered with Bhojpuri and imbued with keen sensitivity to time, person and place, this absorbing multi-voiced, multi-generational epic of endurance, internecine conflict and self-sacrificing devotion is told with the skill and nuance we have come to expect from this writer whose professional life is as professor emerita of language and literature at UWI, St Augustine. Uncle Brother is published by UWI Press, 2015.</p>
<p>Philip Nanton, veteran storyteller, put his BBC-radio-honed raconteur skills to excellent use, sending listeners into gales of laughter with a series of humorous vignettes, some new and some from his Island Voices, about characters and situations in everyday life in St Christopher and the Barracudas, a location that is very likely a stand-in for his native St Vincent and the Grenadines. </p>
<p>Among the tales are a letter sent by a sergeant (ag) to his higher officer, railing about being sidelined for elevation to inspector; a heated exchange in the No Three van whose Rasta driver insists on playing his country and western music to the annoyance and rage of two passengers, identified as Blue Shirt and KFC, who refuse to pay their fare unless the driver changes the music and when put out of the van tell the driver, “Rastaman, you aint got no identity”; a householder’s dismay at the disappearance of his prized, hoarded smoked salmon, after a workman, told to help himself to what’s in the fridge, casually consumes it as nothing more special than “red saltfish”.</p>
<p>Although there was disappointment that Brother Valentino, who was billed to appear, couldn’t make it, the appreciative audience was delighted to be treated to another reading by Sharon Millar. Over wine, tea, coffee, juice, quiche, filled croissants and cake, guests mingled and engaged one another and the readers in critical discussion and ole talk.</p>
<p>Books mentioned here are available at Paper Based bookshop, home to the widest range of Caribbean and diasporic writing for adults, young adults and chuldren.</p>
<p>
​​<strong>The next Tea and Readings is carded for March. Check the Paper Based Bookshop facebook page for updates on this and other events. on.fb.me/1xkAm6b</strong></p>
</div></div></div>Sun, 08 Feb 2015 06:05:05 +0000jason98541 at http://www2.guardian.co.ttBarbara JenkinsRepublic Bank Group makes $869m profithttp://www2.guardian.co.tt/business/2014-08-01/republic-bank-group-makes-869m-profit
<div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www2.guardian.co.tt/sites/default/files/field/image/ron.jpg" width="645" height="783" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>The Republic Bank Group has recorded a net profit of $869.1 million for the third quarter ended June 30—an increase of 1.3 per cent over the corresponding period last year. Chairman, Ronald F. deC Harford, who announced the results said, “The Group is encouraged by the growth in our total assets and loan portfolio of 6 per cent and 8.5 per cent respectively, over the corresponding period in 2013 and the decline in non-performing loans to 3.6 per cent of total loans.” </p>
<p>Harford said this is a reflection of the improved performance in the economies of T&amp;T and Guyana and is tempered somewhat, by the continued weak economic performance in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean. Commenting on Republic Bank’s investment in HFC Bank Ghana, Harford said: “In April, 2014, as mandated by the Ghana Code on Takeover and Mergers and after obtaining approval from the Central Bank of Ghana, the Group submitted an Offeror Statement to HFC Bank Ghana and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of Ghana, in which it was announced that Republic Bank would make an offer to all the shareholders of HFC Bank Ghana to purchase the remaining 60 per cent shareholding. This, however, is now subject to legal challenge before the courts in Ghana.” </p>
<p>Harford said the Republic Bank Group continues to pursue avenues to amicably resolve the matter. He expressed his on-going appreciation for the continued support of management, staff and customers of the Republic Bank Group and said he expects the Group’s performance to continue throughout the last quarter of the year.</p>
</div></div></div>Fri, 01 Aug 2014 05:35:50 +0000Black_Jacobin90032 at http://www2.guardian.co.ttBarbara JenkinsThis year, Lydians playing in Heartshttp://www2.guardian.co.tt/arts/2013-12-01/year-lydians-playing-hearts
<div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www2.guardian.co.tt/sites/default/files/field/image/sing_1.jpg" width="907" height="601" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p><span style="line-height:1.6em">One Wednesday afternoon in 1957, when I was a 15-year-old Form Five student, Mother Helen, choir mistress, St Joseph’s Convent, Port-of-Spain, expelled me from the senior choir. </span><span style="line-height:1.6em">I had repeatedly disobeyed this rule: After school, go home, bathe and change into ordinary clothes and return to choir practice. I didn’t go home. At home ordinary clothes were outgrown school overalls and pipe borne water, a rarity. A situation beyond the boundary of the Convent imagination at that time. </span><span style="line-height:1.6em">On a Monday night, 40 years later, I entered Bishop Anstey High School Hall and the choir mistress asked my name. When I gave it, Pat Bishop said, “You sound like a soprano.” Then: “Joanne, share your music. Show her what to do.” I became a Lydian on the strength of my walking into a Lydians rehearsal, perhaps to sing.</span></p>
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<p>Those two memories surfaced when, after a long lapse, I returned as prodigal to Lydians choir practice last Sunday afternoon. Only the fatted calf was missing. I felt I had come home. <br />
After rehearsal, I asked Lydians’ manager Patrick Bertrand about what’s happening with The Lydians since Pat’s death two years ago. He pointed out the ways in which The Lydians have transitioned and grown while standing on the shoulders of Pat’s immense legacy of innovation and inclusiveness. I was excited to learn that Candice Caton is bringing her young men of the QRC Chorale, and there’s the Freetown Collective and the Little Carib Dance Co. Astra Noel of Lydian Steel debuts two of her compositions and there are new, younger parang soloists. An old-stager like me was relieved to learn that there’s a lot that’s familiar. </p>
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<p>
Eddie Cumberbatch is giving a mini-recital, Alison Seepaul and Adele Bynoe are training the choir in movement, Gillian Bishop designed some of the dancers’ costumes. The programme includes Lydian Steel, Malick Tassa drummers and African drummers and many old favourites among the songs. Co-artistic director André Largen brings eight of his dancers of the Little Carib Dance Co to perform. Responsible for choreography, staging and stage direction, Largen is “delighted to be working with the Lydians again after the August Jubilee Concerts.” He reminded me that the Little Carib Theatre is also part of Pat’s legacy. Sunday Arts Section writer Janine Charles-Farray, co-artistic director of the 2013 Christmas concert series, Christmas—A Season of Love, shared with me her concept of The Four Hearts that shapes the programme. </p>
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The Broken Heart asserts that the power of music and togetherness can transform a broken heart and rekindle love. The Holy Heart pays tribute to Mary, mother of Jesus, in Marian-themed music. In The Festive Heart, local music includes a rousing sequence of parang choruses, a John Jacob arrangement of Lord Relator’s Make a Friend for Christmas and Everard Leon’s At Christmas Your Heart Goes Home. At the end of the journey, The Joyful Heart symbolises love through the joy of music and this is where T&amp;T’s finest tenor, Eddie Cumberbatch will feature.<br />
Pat Bishop would quote to us Lydians, “Until all have crossed, none have crossed, and some we have to carry.” It was her way of reminding Lydians of one of the key tenets of Christianity, and indeed of humanity: Love one another; you are your brother’s keeper. The programme of music for Christmas—A Season of Love, is a journey that the Lydians make with the audience and the wider national community. The journey takes us from our unhappiness at all that is going wrong in our lives, our communities and our nation, through expressions of faith and hope, then to a place of transformative healing with music and love. I left choir practice with much joy in my heart, singing, “Make a new friend for the Christmas this year, you hear…” all the way home.</p>
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<p><strong>• Barbara Jenkins is the 2013 winner of the Hollick Arvon Prize and the author of Sic Transit Wagon (Peepal Tree, 2013).</strong></p>
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<p><strong>The Lydians will stage Christmas—A Season of Love at Queen’s Hall, St Ann’s, December 12-14, at 7.30 pm nightly, and December 15 at 6.30 pm.</strong></p>
</div></div></div>Sun, 01 Dec 2013 12:49:44 +0000Black_Jacobin78788 at http://www2.guardian.co.ttBarbara Jenkins